Biography of Sergio Leone (1929-1989)

Italian film director, born in Rome on January 3, 1929 and died in this city on April 30, 1989.

Life

His penchant for the world of the film comes from family, as his father, Vincenzo Leone, was a well-known film director that, under the pseudonym of "Robert Robertson", filmed the first western made in Italy during the silent period, while his mother was the actress Bice Valerian.

After graduating in law, Sergio Leone worked as Assistant Director of important Italian or American directors; his first works of some importance, include the last days of Pompeii (1959) - which concluded the sickness of its principal conductor Mario Bonnard-, and Sodom and Gomorrah (1962), starring Stewart Granger, in which he collaborated with Robert Aldrich.

Her first work fully as a film director, is a Spanish co-production, also of historic environment entitled the Colossus of Rhodes (1960), attended by some Spanish players who enjoyed some prestige in our cinema, such as Ángel Aranda and Conrado San Martín in those years.

However, Leone became famous for those films known as "spaghetti-western", European western filmed in Italy and Spain (in Almeria on everything), which even got some prestige in certain sector of the criticism and that were, on occasion, the springboard for some American actors. In this sense is very well-known trilogy which took place in the mid-1960s, integrated by a fistful of dollars (1964); Death was a price (1965) and the good, the bad and bad (1966), thirty years after his shooting still retain some validity and, in addition, are material of study for scholars, as actors such as Clint Eastwood and Lee van Cleef, found in them an opportunity to straighten careers that seemed hesitant. Moreover, the soundtrack of death had a price, composed by Ennio Morricone(who he composed the music for several films of Leone) is remembered by all.

Given the good results obtained, Leone continued along this road in films until his time (1968), where he participated Henry Fonda, and whose screenplay was written by Bernardo Bertolucci and Dario Argento, and Crouch maldito (1971), this result that Sam Peckinpah abandon filming.

Until 1984 Sergio Leone did not roll and, from that moment, his line of work took a total turn. Once upon a time in America (1984), his last film, showed that Leone had more chances of which had shown in the spaghetti-western. It's a story of gangsters set in the New York of the dry law that presents a historical development over more than fifty years. Loaded with violence and romanticism, it included other actors Robert de Niro, Elizabeth McGovern, and Jennifer Connelly. His last film was Stalingrad - which was directed by Joseph Vilsmaier - during whose preparation was killed the Italian director.

Filmography

As director, coargumentista and co-writer:

1960: The Colossus of Rhodes. 1964: A fistful of dollars (and coguion). 1965: death had a price. 1966: The good, the bad and the ugly. 1968: your time. 1971: Crouch down, damn. 1984: Once upon a time in America.